Workers’ Rights

As the country anxiously watches the Senate Judiciary Committee conduct hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice, the nation’s political dialogue has been ablaze. Not to be left out, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined the fray recently with a blog post titled “The Right Judge for the Job.” The post, by Chamber president Tom Donohue, is exactly what it sounds like: a full-throated endorsement of Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Public Citizen’s U.S. Chamber Watch project has frequently exposed the Chamber’s long-established right-wing leanings, from its campaign donations to the revolving door of staffers between the Chamber and various conservative institutions. But even by the Chamber’s standards, this endorsement is jaw-dropping. As the Chamber claims to be a politically unbiased institution only looking out for business interests, you would be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at the Chamber endorsing President Trump’s recent Supreme Court nominee. When you begin to dig into Judge Kavanaugh’s history of rulings, though, the Chamber’s support for his confirmation starts to make a whole lot of sense.

In a recent report, Chamber Watch found that in 25 of the 33 cases (76%) in which the Chamber, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), or the American Petroleum Institute (API) participated as party or amicus curiae, Kavanaugh sided with the position advanced by the business groups.

This investigation serves to underscore the extent to which the Chamber’s legal activity now intersects with federal policy. As Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, put it, “Over the past several decades, big business associations, led by the Chamber, have become far more active in federal litigation. The involvement of these associations signals to judges what the Chamber and other trade associations believe to be important.”

It is also consistent with another recent Public Citizen report that found that in 87% of cases, Judge Kavanaugh’s opinion in split-decision on issues like regulatory issues, environmental protection, and worker rights sided with Big Business and against the public interest. These issues are some of the Chamber’s top priorities; the Chamber wants fewer consumer safeguards, fewer environmental standards, and fewer labor protections, because those policies let it pursue higher profits no matter the human cost.

With all of this in mind, the Chamber’s fulsome endorsement of Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation begins to look brazenly self-interested. It wants an ally on the Court who will rule with its arguments in litigation and with its policy agenda. Based on Kavanaugh’s history of rulings, it may have made a safe bet.

One of the most important legal tools that exists to protect against corporate wrongdoing is allowing harmed individuals to band together to sue as a class or collective action. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers can use forced arbitration clauses in employment contracts to block employees from bringing collective and class action lawsuits against their employer. As a result, employers will have free rein to force employees to sign arbitration agreements that waive the right to bring collective or class actions as a condition of employment.

This is a devastating blow to workers’ rights because it is difficult for workers to prove violations of the law such as wage theft or discrimination if they cannot band together with co-workers to show a pattern of abuse. Class actions are also more efficient and can be the only feasible way to bring small dollar claims since the cost of bringing a case can outweigh the monetary harm to any one person but the wrongdoing was widespread. Last week’s SCOTUS decision, Epic Systems v. Lewis, will herald in an era of further restrictions for workers’ access to the courts and drastically weaken the ability to achieve justice in the face of accountability for employers’ wrongdoing. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s hands are all over this misguided decision.

The Chamber filed a “friend of the court” amicus brief in support of the employers, arguing that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) does not protect against forced arbitration as the employees’ legal team argued it does. It makes sense that the Chamber is so invested in advocating for weak employee protections; this fits in with the Chamber’s longlegacy of hostility toward workers’ rights. The corporations that make up the Chamber’s membership have a financial interest in employers’ unmitigated ability to dictate all the terms of employees’ contracts.

The Chamber’s allies in the corporate sphere are already jumping at the opportunities provided by the Court’s decision. Shortly after the decision was announced, employment firm Ogletree Deakins released an automated ‘DIY’ tool for companies to include forced arbitration clauses in their contracts.

The Supreme Court’s ruling is alarming to civil rights and consumer rights activists who worry that the decision will limit employees’ access to justice in order to fight a whole host of corporate wrongdoing including discrimination, wage theft, and sexual harassment. Just this week, in light of the Epic decision, Chipotle petitioned a court to exclude more than 2,000 persons from an ongoing wage theft lawsuit because the company argued the workers signed arbitration agreements that prohibited them from joining any class actions.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that “[i]t would be grossly exorbitant to read the FAA [Federal Arbitration Act] to devastate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other laws enacted to eliminate, root and branch, class-based employment discrimination.” She also called on Congress to pass legislation that would affirm the right of employees to join class actions to oppose discriminatory employment contracts such as violations of equal pay for women.

Public Citizen is committed to doing just that by working to make sure the Arbitration Fairness Act is passed, which prohibits forced arbitration for employment, consumer, antitrust or civil rights disputes, and also by spearheading corporate campaigns to call on individual companies to voluntarily end the use of forced arbitration clauses. If the Arbitration Fairness Act were to receive a vote—something that’s not likely in the current Congress, unfortunately—you can bet that the Chamber’s voice would bellow in opposition as it has done in the past.

As Public Citizen noted in its own friend of the court brief that we filed in support of workers, access to the courts is an essential right for workers and consumers to in standing up to corporate abuses. The Chamber, it seems, would prefer to let those abuses run rampant.

It will likely not surprise you that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not too fond of unions. The ability for workers to collectively bargain and improve the conditions of their employment is a threat to the bottom lines of the corporations that make up the Chamber’s membership. The Chamber is motivated to block the power of unions by its desire for corporations to have the ability to keep wages low for their workforce, to limit workplace safety protections, and to make sure that workers can’t fight back.

What you may not know, however, is that the Chamber also opposes other, non-union labor initiatives. Enter worker centers. Worker centers are groups of working people from certain sectors who do not have the legal right to collectively bargain, but are nevertheless an important force in advocating for the rights of workers and their communities. Worker centers might organize for better wages and benefits, or they might educate the public about injustices such as racism in the labor market. They do not have the same legal status as a union, but they provide a valuable safety net to workers who do not or cannot belong to a union.

Apparently, the Chamber is outraged by even that level of worker protection. They have taken up the mantle of impugning worker centers with the ultimate goal of doing away with them. In April, the Chamber released a report entitled “Worker Centers: Union Front Groups and the Law.” In it, the Chamber lays out the argument that worker centers are “union front groups”—that is, that they are secretly unions going by another name and should be regulated the same way unions are. This is transparently absurd: worker centers exist specifically to serve populations that are not served by unions, and they lack the power to collectively bargain, which is one of the defining attributes of unions. The Chamber would have us ignore this clear distinction because it is inconvenient for its narrative.

As is so often the case, this effort to dismantle the power of worker centers by the Chamber mirrors a similar effort by the GOP. House Republicans have vowed to make the same changes to worker centers’ legal classification as the Chamber is advocating for.

Of course, if the Chamber and its buddies in the GOP truly felt that worker centers are secretly unions, they could say that centers should have all of the same collective bargaining power as unions do. But of course they won’t do that, because these arguments are in bad faith: the Chamber and its allies know full well that worker centers are merely a minimal line of defense for workers who have nothing else to protect them, and are unable to tolerate even that meager level of worker protections.

It should not surprise us that the Chamber takes such consistently anti-worker stances. However, it actually may surprise the corporations that are members of the Chamber and proclaim to care about their workers’ lives and well-being. For instance, McDonald’s and Gap both having sections on their websites about respecting the human rights of their workers. These companies should take a long look at the Chamber’s appalling record on workers’ rights and withdraw their funding and support for the Chamber.

Last week, a federal judge dismissed a case against a Seattle ordinance that would allow Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize. Seattle’s ordinance was passed in 2015 and would enable drivers to band together and collectively bargain with giant ride-hailing companies regarding pay, benefits, and working conditions.

The plaintiff in this case was none other than that relentless defender of corporate exploitation — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber argued without any evidence that the “ordinance will burden innovation, increase prices, and reduce quality and services for consumers.” This is actually the second complaint that the Chamber has filed against this law — an earlier case was thrown out last year — although another suit against the ordinance is still ongoing.

The rights of Uber and Lyft drivers have become an increasingly contentious subject as the ride-hailing platforms have expanded. Although the Seattle ordinance is designed to bypass this issue, much of the debate centers on how to classify these drivers in terms of their relationship with the ride hailing companies for which they work. Uber and Lyft have an incentive to categorize their drivers as “independent contractors”. This enables the companies to dodge monetary obligations — such as payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare as well as providing health insurance — that come with a traditional employer-employee relationship.

The current arrangement, under which ride hailing companies treat their drivers as independent contractors with no formal employment contract, has revealed itself to be seriously flawed. Despite Uber’s claims to the contrary, some of its workers fail to make minimum wage. The company is also notorious for its mistreatment of drivers. In fact, a report by the New York Times detailed the types of mind games the company plays in order to get more rides out of its drivers. While Lyft enjoys a far better public reputation, the company still confronts questions over the status of its workers. Allowing Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize could be a solution to many of these problems as it would provide drivers with the bargaining power necessary to successfully negotiate with giant corporations.

The Chamber’s insistence that everything is going swimmingly with the gig economy should come as no surprise. The gig economy has been a boon to giant corporations by reducing their labor costs, and the Chamber has a consistent record of putting profits before people. The Chamber also has a long history of fighting against workers’ protections, given that it was initially founded “to act as a counterweight to the growing labor movement.” The gig economy’s role in goosing corporate profits while weakening the labor movement explains why the Chamber was so determined to fight the Seattle ordinance in court.

It is often easy to become seduced by the siren song of technological “progress” and “innovation.” The Chamber’s embrace of the gig economy should serve as a warning to us all that simply because an industry is new and “innovative” doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be scrutinized to see if it treats its workers fairly and justly.

This past February, the Chamber outlined what it believes to be the ten most pressing policies that require action at the NLRB and the many instances in which the Obama-era NLRB allegedly “stack[ed] the deck against employers.” The list covers a range of anti-worker topics, many of which Kaplan boasts about having experience in on his Linkedin account, including his “efforts to fight DOL overtime rules.” The overtime rulewould provide overtime pay to millions of workers and would have the salutary benefit of exerting upward pressure on wages for middle income Americans whose salaries have long been stagnant. Kaplan also boasts about drafting the “Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act,” a piece of legislation the Chamber backed, which sought to undo the NLRB rule that cut the waiting time for union elections down to as few as 10 days.

While the Chamber’s labor policy wish list touches on a plethora of issues, it focuses most intently on collective bargaining. Collective bargaining, an effective means of raising wages (no wonder the Chamber hates it!), is the process by which workers, with their unions, negotiate contracts with their employers. Terms of employment that are oftentimes covered in collective bargaining include wages, benefits, hours, worker safety and a slew of other protections. The NLRB is frequently asked to rule on disputes relating to collective bargaining in addition to many other high-profile labor topics, including examination of “joint employer” relationships, and will be looked to to make a determination as to whether or not graduate students should be considered employees with the right to unionize.

Kaplan isn’t the only bad actor being nominated to the NLRB. William Emanuel of the law firm Littler Mendelson, has also been nominated, and has also received supportfrom the Chamber. Kaplan and Emanuel, both nominated at the end of June both had hearings less than 3 weeks later, one of the speediest nomination processes thus far in the Trump administration.

Trump, the Chamber, and their GOP allies in the House and Senate have all complained that under Obama, the NLRB imposed what they deem to be burdensome regulations on businesses. Their criticisms of the NLRB indicate that they fundamentally misunderstand that one of the major functions of the board is to enforce the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, guaranteeing the right of most private sector employees to organize.

It comes as no surprise that the Chamber is asking for a swift confirmation process. Randy Johnson, senior vice president of labor, immigration, and employee benefits for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, refers to Kaplan as a “balanced and thoughtful” individual, going on to say that the Chamber has “worked with Marvin over the years and he will be a great addition to the NLRB.” Which, when translated out of Chamber-speak, means something more along the lines of, “this is just the guy we need to achieve those ten policy goals!” The Chamber’s support for each of these nominees is rooted in its desire to destroy worker protections in an effort to protect corporate profits; the speed at which the nomination process is occurring just goes to show how antsy the Chamber and its GOP allies are to strip workers of their rights and hand over even more power to giant corporations.

Congratulations on your new role as Chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Because this is an important position, one that has the potential to steer the direction the Chamber takes throughout the next year, we wanted to remind you of an op-ed you wrote last September for the WashingtonPost titled, “How corporations can be a force for good.”

In your piece, you call upon companies to use their influence to promote policies that benefit the labor force and the planet, while still yielding profits. In the months since your September op-ed, President Trump was elected and took office, and he now has begun rolling back a whole raft of policies that were aimed at protecting workers and the environment. As such, there’ve been no shortages of opportunities for companies to, in your well-timed words, “be a force for good,” by using their influence to oppose the rollback of these policies.

Let’s start with Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. Allstate has expressed concern over the impacts of climate change, signing onto the 2013 CERES Climate Declaration, as well as committing to reduce energy use. While we haven’t heard from Allstate, we have heard a chorus of business voices disavowing President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. From Facebook, to Google, to Tesla, companies used their influence to defend environmental responsibility, because like you said, “fully integrating social good into a corporation’s purpose is also good for business.”

In light of your own support for action to combat climate change as well as the support of much of the business community, Americans and shareholders want to know what will you do to reverse the Chamber’s anti-climate policies? It is the Chamber that funded the debunkedstudy that Trump used to justify his decision to withdraw from the Paris accord. What’s more, the Chamber is one of the loudest and most influential voices lobbying and litigating against action on climate change. Are you not concerned, in your new role leading the Chamber – the very entity that lauds itself as the voice for business – that it is out of step with some of the country’s other largest corporations? “Corporations should be encouraged and rewarded for stepping up to solve society’s problems,” you wrote, and in present times, it would seem that the well-being of our planet is one of society’s more pressing problems. What will you do to get the Chamber to change direction and step up to solve the global crisis of climate change?

It isn’t just climate policy, however, that has companies at odds with the Chamber. At Allstate, you raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour because, in your words, “it was good business to do so” (something many others agree on) and because “more prosperous communities with better-educated workers and customers also provide a much better economic and business climate.” Why then, does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which you now chair, oppose raising the minimum wage every chance it gets, while also continuing its fight against overtime pay? As chairman of the Chamber, what will you do to reverse the Chamber’s ferocious opposition to raising the minimum wage and implementing the overtime rule?

What’s more, 57 percent of your employees at Allstate are women, many of them with management roles. While Allstate’s commitment to hiring and promoting women is to be commended, are you aware that the Chamber consistently lobbies against policies that promote workplace equity for women? What will you do to reverse the Chamber’s opposition to pro-women, pro-family policies such as equal pay, paid leave and banning pregnancy discrimination?

If you are serious about corporations being a force for good, then you must, in your capacity as Chamber chairman, ensure that the Chamber reverses course on all of these issues. And if under your leadership, the leading voice of Big Business in Washington continues to use its megaphone to be the loudest advocate for policies that harm workers, women and the planet, it seems that your own advice would leave you with no choice but to step down from your position as chairman. Because after all, in your words, “social good is good for business.” If the Chamber won’t reverse course and support social good, then it isn’t doing good for business. Neither for your own company’s good, nor those of many of your peers.

The new Republican Congress is only four months old, but it’s already shown that it cares far more about big corporations than the millions of Americans who work for them. This Congress has made the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s priorities its priorities, and this week, the House is set to vote on a bill that is the latest front in the Chamber’s War on Workers.

The deceptively named Working Families Flexibility Act (H.R. 1180/S. 801), introduced by Rep. Martha Roby (R – Ala.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R – Utah), and vigorously supported by the Chamber would allow employers to offer comp time as an alternative to time-and-a-half overtime pay when employees work more than 40 hours in a week. H.R. 1180 would give even more power to employers over employees’ wages and working hours and further undermine workers’ ability to make ends meet, while doing nothing to increase flexibility for employees.

Last month, Leonard Court testified in support of H.R. 1180 on behalf of the Chamber at a House Education and Workforce Committee Hearing. In his testimony, Court stated, among many other false narratives, that “the decision to opt for comp time always rests with the employee, not the employer.” Unfortunately, this is not the case. H.R. 1180 further widens the power gap between an employee and her or her employer in a number of ways, making it a bill that Public Citizen opposes.

Under the law, employers would have the final say as to whether to offer an employee comp time instead of overtime, and have the power to deny an employee’s request to use their comp time. For example, an employee who had opted to receive comp time for overtime hours worked could have enough hours saved up to take off work to care for a sick family member, but could still have her request denied by her boss.

What’s more, there is no guarantee that an employee who does not accept comp time in lieu of time and half overtime pay would not find herself penalized with fewer hours and loss of overtime work. An employer who wants to avoid paying overtime may just stop asking employees that refuse comp time to work overtime and instead ask employees amenable to comp time to work extra hours. Such employees will see their earnings decline without any corresponding benefits if this bill becomes law.

The Working Families Flexibility Act- or rather the Betrayal of Working Families Act- would be a step in the wrong direction for hourly, full-time workers as well as for salaried, non-exempt workers who are eligible for overtime pay. Instead of providing working people and their families with the time off and the financial stability they need to care for themselves and their loved ones, this “flexibility” bill offers forced choices and false promises.

In addition to providing employers with even more power over their employees, H.R. 1180 increases the already not-insignificant incentive for employers to hire fewer people and instead rely on existing employees working overtime hours to get the job done. Under H.R. 1180, employers can “pay” for these overtime hours in future comp time, as opposed to having to pay for them immediately in wages. This in turn could mean that H.R. 1180 could result in less hiring, leaving more people unemployed.

Workers are never better off if they accept comp time in lieu of overtime pay, but instead, can end up in a much worse situation with increased risk and delay in pay. The Fair Labor Standards Act is already in place to allow an employer to grant time off to employees who work overtime, and H.R. 1180 adds nothing new in this regard.

This legislation is a classic case of Chamber smoke and mirrors. This bill would make it harder for people who need to work extra hours to pay their bills while providing no real guarantee of increased comp time. Its ultimate goal is to make labor cheaper for corporations. Of course, in so doing, it takes money out of the pockets of working people.

It’s a shame that the GOP Congress has embraced another Chamber-touted windfall for big business. But why should we be surprised? After all, when the Chamber and other corporate interests spend big on elections, we wind up with politicians who are beholden to corporations rather than the American people.

You might think that an organization like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would be supportive of working women. After all, when women enter the workforce, they contribute to economic growth. And the Chamber has made “#LetsGrow” its mantra for 2017.

Unfortunately, you would be wrong. In fact, the Chamber, like some members of the Republican Party it funds to advance its corporatist agenda, has been waging a decades-long war on working women.

Perhaps no other incident epitomizes the Chamber’s attitude towards women better than a blog post on the Chamber website, which has since been deleted and swept under the rug. In this piece, former Chamber Senior Director of Communications Brad Peck asserted that equal pay advocates have “a fetish for money” and that if women didn’t wish to worry about the implications of being paid less than their male counterparts, they should “not overlook the obvious, immediate, power-of-the-individual solution: choosing the right place to work and choosing the right partner at home.” Because, after all, the Chamber’s logic goes, if more women only married well, they wouldn’t have to worry about silly little things like equal pay for equal work. To add insult to injury, the piece was written on the anniversary of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted women the right to vote.

And while the Chamber may have briefly interrupted what we imagine is a never-ending Mad Men binge-watching party in the office to apologize for the blog post, it has yet to interrupt its lobbying campaign against legislation that would advance equity for women.

Dating back to at least the 1970s, the Chamber has long opposed workplace policies for women relating to equal pay, pregnancy, and medical leave. In 1977 the Chamber lobbied against amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to cover women from discrimination due to pregnancy. Just a year later, in 1978, the Chamber used the argument that pregnancy is a “voluntary” condition in its opposition to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. We assume that these Chamber policy decisions were made in a room by people who looked a lot like this.

In 1987, the Chamber warned that the Family and Medical Leave Act would set a “dangerous precedent of federally mandated employee benefits.” What it didn’t mention is that in addition to covering pregnancy-related leave, the FMLA simply allows women to receive wages while recovering from a serious illness, caring for an ill family member, or newborn.

In 1998, the Chamber opposed President Clinton’s push for equal pay, saying that wage disparities are due to the interruption of many women’s careers in order to raise a family, as opposed to discrimination.

In 2007, the Chamber sided with Lilly Ledbetter’s employer in her suit demanding equal pay because the Chamber’s lawyers complained that Ledbetter’s “tear-stained testimony” might prejudice the jury against her employer.

But, the Chamber didn’t stop there: In 2009, it urged members of Congress “to oppose the ‘Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.’” The Lilly Ledbetter Act corrected the 2007 decision by the Supreme Court that required Ledbetter to bring her pay discrimination claim within 180 days of receiving her first unequal paycheck, even though she did not know she was being paid unfairly until years later. The Act clarified that every discriminatory paycheck restarts the 180 day clock to bring a claim. This legislation was a hugely important win for women toward eliminating the gender pay gap.

As if lobbying against a ban on pregnancy discrimination and opposing equal pay for equal work salary wasn’t enough, in 2009, the Chamber went so far as to lobby against legislation that would allow rape victims to bring lawsuits against their employers.

Recent years have not brought about a sudden change of heart and the Chamber continues its war on women. In both 2014 and 2015, the Chamber opposed to the Paycheck Fairness Act, legislation that would address the pay gap by requiring companies to justify pay discrepancies based on legitimate factors such as education, training, and experience. And this year, when the Chamber laid out its labor priorities for the new congress, it stated that while Democrats are still fighting “what they ostensibly see as lingering inequality in wages between men and women,” Republicans should use the opportunity to focus more on anti-retaliation and clarification of employers’ defenses.

When you get right down to it, as far as the Chamber is concerned, receiving equal pay for equal work decreases the profits of the companies that currently engage in gender discrimination. For the Chamber and many of the giant corporations that fund it, inequality is a lot cheaper than closing the pay gap which still remains at 22 cents on the dollar for full­time, year-round work. The Chamber’s steadfast opposition to equal pay for equal work and other labor protections benefitting women makes us wonder, who really has the “fetish for money?”

If you’re a progressive, you might feel tempted to pop the champagne corks after the spectacular collapse of the GOP’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) last week making it seem as if President Trump and Republican Congress may not be ready for prime time governing.

With all of these stories dominating the news cycle, some might think that Trump administration and GOP Congress are simply not ready to govern. Hobbled by incompetence and internal squabbling, they seem to lurch from one fiasco to the next.

However, the daily headlines of scandals mask one area where Trump and the GOP Congress have been successful at advancing the Republican agenda: they have already succeeded in pursuing the most aggressive regulatory rollback since the Reagan administration.

The main driver of this deregulatory agenda is the big business behemoth that is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Sure, it may have been Steve Bannon who uttered the words, “deconstruct the administrative state,” but it is the Chamber along with its big business allies who behind this drive to gut critical public protections.

So forgive us for being Debbie Downers and for corking the champagne as we take a moment to bring you up to speed on what the GOP, Chamber, and Trump have succeeded in doing during the first two months of this administration.

The past two months have been marked by an aggressive use of the heretofore rarely used Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to strike down regulatory protections issued in the final months of a previous administration using expedited procedures. Hundreds of public protections are at risk through the CRA, 15 have been repealed by the House, 12 in the Senate, and already 7 have been signed by Trump.

Just this week, Trump signed four more CRA resolutions. Among them was the “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” rule, which barred companies from receiving federal contracts if they had a history of violating wage, labor or workplace safety laws. The U.S. Chamber has been lobbying against this rule since its creation, in an effort to protect big federal contractors from being finally held accountable. Another of these was a Bureau of Land Management rule known as “Planning 2.0,” which gave the federal government a greater role in land use decisions. This rule was opposed by the energy industry, and therefore the Chamber strongly lobbied for its demise.

Unfortunately, the CRA isn’t the only tool in the Trump Administration’s toolbox. Trump has also issued several executive orders (EOs) undoing our public protections. He issued an EO mandating that two regulations are to be repealed for every new one that goes on the books. This week, he signed an EO aimed at undoing numerous climate initiatives put in place by the Obama administration. The EO includes telling the EPA and other agencies to rollback components of the Clean Power Plan, reconsider carbon standards for new coal plants, reassess methane emission regulations, as well as several other changes sought by the fossil fuel industry. And, earlier this month, Trump announced the EPA would review and likely weaken Obama’s fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks in the post-2022 period. While there may be obstacles to achieving all of this, it is still a huge step in the wrong direction if we want to have a serious chance at limiting the impacts of global warming. And, sadly, these deregulatory these moves were all sought by the Chamber, which is no stranger to battling Obama-era environmental policies. In the course of just 3 years, the Chamber opposed the EPA in court 26 times and they have lobbied on these issues for years.

Most recently, the U.S. House of Representatives did the bidding of corporate America by using the CRA to vote to repeal Broadband Privacy Protections, which prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from tracking the browsing habits of customers without their permission and place obligations on ISPs to keep their customers’ data secure, giving customers more control over their personal data and privacy. Earlier this month the Chamber sent a letter to the Science and Transportation Committee leadership urging members to vote in favor of this CRA stripping Americans of their internet privacy.

So there you have it. Trump and the GOP Congress are successfully dismantling many important public protections including those protecting clean water, clean air, worker health and safety, and internet privacy. And the Chamber has been behind most of these regulatory rollbacks we’ve seen in the past 60 days. While Steven Bannon may falsely claim that deconstructing the “administrative state” will benefit the people, the reality is that it is not the people that are behind this agenda, it is the Chamber and giant corporations that are pushing it. Empty populist rhetoric aside, the administration’s deregulatory zeal is proof positive of the overwhelming influence of its corporate masters.

Political rhetoric blaming government regulations for stifled small business growth is at an all-time high, and it’s no surprise that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is behind most of it. The Chamber has a long history of opposing regulations under the guise of being a voice for small business. Whether it’s the overtime rule that would provide overtime pay to millions of middle income Americans, the Clean Water Rule to protect our streams and rivers, the Clean Power Plan to limit power plant emissions of greenhouse gases, and the open internet rules to preserve net neutrality, the Chamber has yet to meet a regulation it didn’t want rolled back.

The Chamber also called for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), supporting the American Health Care Act, despite the 24 million who would lose health care. But it doesn’t stop there. Tom Donohue and his big business allies would also like to see a repeal of Dodd-Frank Act, and specifically condemned the Volcker Rule to limit speculative trades by banks of the kind that led to the 2008 Financial Crisis and has vowed to fight against the fiduciary rule, which protects retirement savers from dishonest investment advisors.

Not only has the Chamber come out in favor or nearly every CRA challenge we’ve seen since Trump took office, it is also a strong supporter of the Regulatory Accountability Act, which would hamstring future efforts to protect consumers, workers, and the environment by layering on so many additional process requirements that rulemaking to protect the public would essentially come to a halt. Just last week, the Chamber released two video ads, targeting Senators Heitkamp and McCaskill, urging them to support the RAA.

All of this, under the clever, yet dishonest PR scheme that regulations hurt, and never help, small businesses. It makes perfect sense- if the Chamber and big business want to accomplish the corporate windfall that would result from a deregulatory agenda, the best way to do so is to tout themselves as the advocate of Main Street.

However, many of the regulations that Donohue mentions don’t even apply to small businesses, and others, like the Clean Water Rule and the CFPB actually help small businesses.

While these conservative talking points often misleadingly focus on the burdens that regulations place on small business, surveys and poll data show that the very owners of these small businesses generally do not agree with their alleged advocates. According to a poll by Small Business Majority, 86% of small business owners agree some regulation of business is necessary for a modern economy, and 93% of them agree their business can live with some regulation if it is fair, manageable and reasonable. What’s more, 78% of small employers agree regulations are important in protecting small businesses from unfair competition and to level the playing field with big business. Another 79% of small business owners support having clean air and water in their community in order to keep their family, employees and customers healthy, and 61% support standards that move the country towards energy efficiency and clean energy. This runs directly contradictory to the Chamber’s lobbying for the repeal of Stream Protection rule, and the Oil Anti-corruption rule, which would leaving communities susceptible to water pollution by coal miners, and enable oil tycoons to avoid transparency.

Regulations do help small businesses and a lack of regulation can have detrimental effects. Just yesterday, a small business owner testified before the House Small Business Committee and urged lawmakers to ensure that public protections are in place to give his catering business fundamental confidence that the food and water they serve and consume is safe. Regulations provide the market with a basic level of certainty to ensure we are protected from tainted food, unsafe drugs, poisoned water, and polluted air.

There are other regulations, such as anti-trust laws that address price discrimination and price fixing, that help small business owners by leveling the playing field against larger businesses. The Chamber also fails to mention the many regulations enforced under the Small Business Administration that small businesses are prioritized for a certain set of government contracts.

When regulations don’t exist, it is typically small businesses who suffer most. The Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico devastated small businesses in the tourism and fishing industry, and not surprisingly it was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who went to court on behalf of British Petroleum and sought to keep the local small businesses out of court, all the while claiming to be the voice of Main Street.

While the Chamber is spending big bucks to lobby against commonsense protections, it is crucial to remember that clean air, clean water, and regulation of Wall Street protect the public. Clear rules protect small businesses and manufacturers from powerful interests who use their financial advantage to try to rig the system in their favor.